Closing Doors
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: Aged 19, when Mickey had been on the other side of too many closed doors - the metallic slam of a jail cell that still made him shudder in memory, the ding of the door at the Kash 'n' Grab as it signaled another customer, that signaled another 5 minutes he'd have to wait before he could be alone with Ian - he couldn't help but think of his stolen moments with Gallagher.


Mickey couldn't stand closed doors.

They remind him too much of his mom.

They remind him of being stuck on the other side, listening to the muffled sounds of an argument,  
the banging of heads against walls, the smashing of plates echoing loudly.

They remind him of being locked in a bathroom, aged 8, with his mom while Terry banged and pounded on the door.  
He remembers thinking that the closed door meant that they were safe, that they were protected from Terry and the alcohol on his breath, in his belly, but they weren't.  
The door was pulled from it's hinges and he got to see that day what it was like to be on the inside of the closed door,  
except this time it wasn't plates that got smashed, but his mom's head off of the sink, smudges of red left behind on the porcelain.

When Mickey was 13 his teacher had to leave the room and she didn't trust any of the students enough to leave the door unlocked, so she had taken the key, ignoring Mickey's angry protests, and locked them all in there.  
And Mickey had felt his chest tighten, his heart race faster and tears prick at his eyes as it became hard to breathe.  
He sat in front of the door, focusing on breathing, eyes glued to the door knob, waiting for it to rattle and when it eventually did, when his teacher walked back in the room, he'd glared at her and walked out and made sure that he never, ever went back after that.

When Mickey was 14 his mom overdosed.  
The paramedics put her on a stretcher and carried her into the ambulance and nobody else was home, so Mickey had to go with her and he was scared and didn't know what to do.  
He sobbed as the paramedics ushered him in and closed the rear doors and he remembered watching them, like they were in slow-motion and he thought of the book that he saw that Gallagher kid in his class reading and all he could think of was one of the characters, Jonah, being swallowed down into the black hole that is the belly of the whale.

His mom didn't escape with a bloody head and a bruised face this time.  
She escaped for good, needle marks in her arm, burns on the insides of a lips and a peaceful look on her face.  
He'd sat in the hospital ward with her for over an hour, door propped open with a beaten chair that stood on 3 legs, one bent up awkwardly, and he watched as the tension left her face, could've sworn he even saw her deflate as the life slid out of her.

When he got home that night he opened every window and every door in the house before he could bring himself to tell Mandy what had happened.  
It was the middle of winter and he shook with more than the cold as he hugged her and promised her that things were going to be ok.

That night he punched his bedroom door straight off it's hinges, just like he'd seen his dad do all them years before, and Iggy had just rolled his eyes at him and replaced it with the bathroom door which was slightly too big so it couldn't close all the way and just that quarter of an inch of wood made Mickey feel like he could breathe again after being held under the water for too long.

Aged 16, Mickey cursed that door in a way he never had before.  
He cursed it each time Gallagher slammed his hips into his own because Terry was just on the other side of it and he needed it to be closed, he needed the protection because no matter how good it felt, in Terry's eyes it was wrong.  
What he was doing with Ian was wrong and Mickey shouldn't be enjoying it so much.

When Terry walked in moments after Ian had pulled out of him, Mickey's heart tripped over itself in his chest as he waited for the moment Terry walked back out of it, waited for it to close as much as it could, waited for the moment that he could breathe again.

And when it finally came, the muted slam of wood against wood, the first thing Mickey saw was Ian.

Aged 19, when Mickey had been on the other side of too many closed doors - the metallic slam of a jail cell that still made him shudder in memory, the ding of the door at the Kash 'n' Grab as it signaled another customer, that signaled another 5 minutes he'd have to wait before he could be alone with Ian - he couldn't help but think of his stolen moments with Gallagher.

The stolen moments behind the closed door of the freezer, with Ian's chest pressed against his back, his hand covering Mickey's own and their breaths ragged and desperate. He thought of the locked door of Ian's bedroom, a chair pressed up against it, balancing awkwardly on two legs, as they managed to sneak fifteen minutes alone.

He thought of the door closing for the first time as they moved into the little rundown apartment in the heart of Chicago.  
Their apartment.

Mickey didn't think he would ever mind the creak of it's hinges as the door shut behind him, as long as the first thing he saw every time he walked through it was Ian.


End file.
